


A Springtime of Peace

by Milady



Category: Secret Garden (1993)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:13:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milady/pseuds/Milady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The children reborn in the secret garden have come of age in the cold shadow of the Great War.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Springtime of Peace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [squiggyrag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/squiggyrag/gifts).



> I hope you will enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> Happy Yuletide!

The inhabitants of Misselthwaite Manor and the surrounding Yorkshire villages woke to a light snow falling across the moors at daybreak. Mary Lennox opened her eyes slowly; her head ached. Though sleep had come to her, it was fitful and disquieting. She had dreamed of a fire in the garden.

 _Someone was crying._

 _"Where are you?"_

 _The air was crackling and hissing. It was warm - too warm._

 _"Where are you?"_

 _A hard crash, then groaning in the sudden darkness._

 _Someone was crying..._

Martha broke up Mary's hazy recollections with a cheerful greeting and a breakfast tray. It was still the practice at Misselthwaite to have breakfast in one's room on such a cold morning, to give the fires time to warm the long corridors and great halls.

"Good morning, Miss Mary!" Like Mary and Colin, Martha had matured in the distant shadow of years of war. Even with the injection of the Americans into the mix, the Great War still raged none too far from England for anyone’s liking. Yet, with two brothers fighting, she went about her duties with nary a complaint or a sigh. She set the breakfast tray on the table and brought Mary's dressing gown to the bedside. "'Tis a cold morning today! I'll not be doubting you'll have a fine appetite for some porridge - it's fresh out of Cook's pot!"

She smiled weakly in gratitude but remained quiet. Mary was still disturbed by the recollection of her dream. As she sat down to her breakfast, she was suddenly compelled to ask after Martha's brothers.

"Aye, miss, I've heard from both of them just this week. A kind thing of you to ask." Martha smiled teasingly while she pulled back the dish covers. She knew Mary wished to ask after Dickon in particular.

Mary would not satisfy Martha’s teasing or her own curiosity. The year before, her friends had laughed cruelly when Dickon, dirty-faced and in the company of his animals, waved at her as they passed by him on the moor one morning. In the carriage, they had made sport of him for nearly an hour. Not since the days of children chanting “Mistress Mary” all the way to England had she been so angry and humiliated. The incident forced her to consciously acknowledge that her life was coming to a crossroads, and her path would not linger forever in the secret garden. Though her heart felt twisted inside out, she had let things between her and Dickon change.

“I am glad to hear they are well,” was all that Mary would say on the subject.

Martha saw the clouds floating in over Mary’s face and chose not to push the subject anymore. She bade Miss Mary a good morning and excused herself to attend to the rest of her morning duties.

Watching Martha leave, Mary felt a small, wistful pang. She remembered clearly her first days at Misselthwaite, how Martha stayed at her side for the lonely meals in her room. In those first months in Yorkshire, Mary had been an ugly child, inside and out, and a fair match for her sour, peevish cousin who had tried the patience of the entire house for years, but Martha had not withdrawn from her. She had been gentle and cheeky in turns, whatever Mary needed most when she could not be in the garden.

Even now, Mary was not a merry or vivacious person. She still saw the lines in a changing world. She did not struggle with practicality. She made friends slowly, carefully, and in small numbers. But, she - she who had cried not one tear for her ayah, the nanny she had lost in the earthquake - struggled with a warm, familiar regard for Martha. With the first spoonful of porridge, she swallowed a wish to again be able to ask Martha to stay. It settled in her stomach like a rock.

Mary had arranged with the few young ladies who lived within a reasonable distance of Misselthwaite to ‘make their rounds’ that morning. As they were not in the heart of the English war effort, they had come up with their own effort. They visited the poor, the sick, and the injured soldiers in their grasp with cheer, sympathetic ears, and practical gifts. In the colder months, these gifts were often warm articles of clothing made or gathered by the girls. Mary had initially struggled with the needle (her natural impatience did not help) but applied herself to knitting until she could produce blankets without gaping holes and, eventually, quite passable socks, mufflers, and jumpers. These items were gratefully received, especially by the many mothers who had to do more with less each day.

She had worked fervently the night before to finish her contribution, knitting by the fire long after Colin had put away his books and gone to bed. As the morning wore on toward noontime, Mary felt the weight of this deficit. She made her excuses to her friends for not making one of the party for lunch and was grateful the moment she passed the threshold of the hall at Misselthwaite.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock, was passing through at this time and stopped to help Mary out of her coat. As she did, she inquired very civilly after her success.

“We did all that we planned to do today.”

“If I may say, Miss Mary, you look tired. Perhaps it would be best if you rested before dinner.”

As a girl of ten or eleven, Mary might have wondered if Mrs. Medlock had laced her sheets with poison or filled her mattress with nails, but the old animosities had long ago given way into a cordial, if not overly warm, relationship. She agreed with the assessment and asked for Martha to be sent up to help her undress for a nap. Martha came promptly, and Mary was not in the house half an hour before she was once again sleeping in her large bed by the windows.

 

 _There was a bonfire. She stood around it with Dickon and Colin, both much younger than she. They lept and chanted as the flames licked the air between them. In the reflection of the fire, she saw her uncle stood behind them all, bent over and hiding his face in his palm. She turned toward him and immediately heard a scream from behind. When she faced the fire again, it had spread. The climbing vines and draping roses were all aflame, and the grass withered as the fire expanded._

 _Colin was the one screaming. His feet were barely above the leaping peaks of the approaching fire as he tried to scramble up a tall stone wall. Suddenly, his hold gave way. He fell, falling too far and too fast to be safe. Mary heard a sickening crack and then another scream. Everything, even the fire, slowed to a crawl around her._

 _"Colin!" cried his father. "Colin, where are you?" Leaning heavily on his walking stick, Craven moved closer and closer toward the fire. He was inclined toward it, as if he was straining to hear the hysterical screaming of his son from the other side of the fire._

 _"Colin, you must get up! Get up!"_

 _"I can't, Mary! I can't walk!"_

 _Mary remembered Dickon; she had seen him beside Colin. She called out for him, begging him to help Colin up. "You have to help Colin! Dickon!" Mary turned and turned, looking everywhere for her sturdy friend. There was no answer to her calls. She could not see him anymore._

 _“Dickon!”_

 _  
_

"Beg your pardon, Miss Mary."

Mary jolted at the sound of the earthly voice. She rose warily, gathering her blankets around her for protection.

"Beg your pardon," the voice repeated, "but you were wanting to be awake a half-hour before dinner, weren't you?"

Mary was anxious to see Betty, not Martha, come to wake her. "Where is Martha? Has she taken ill?"

"Aye, miss, that she has. Oh, not that anything is wrong with her herself, she is as fit as she was this morning, but she's had such bad news as one never wants to hear from home."

Mary swallowed hard. "Her brother?"

Betty looked over both shoulders, checking for the housekeeper's ears hidden in the tapestries, before nodding. "Aye, Miss Mary, 'tis Dickon. He's gotten himself wounded. He shan't die of it, you know, but Martha is in such a state over it. She's worried he won't be himself - crippled, y'see - after this." Amidst her rambling, Betty did notice the lady's crushed expression and finally brought her tongue to a halt on the grave side of the topic. "Oh, now don't be starting yourself, Miss Mary. Dickon is a strong boy, you know it yourself, and I'd lay a month's wages he can make his leg good again faster than any."

This, Mary could acknowledge, was true. If she knew a rebounding spirit, his name was Dickon. Yet, she knew Dickon's physical health was his only fortune. He had no professional or intellectual prospects; they had acknowledged as much on the day they had decided they could not be alone in the secret garden anymore. "Shall he be discharged, then? Will he be coming home soon?"

"Aye, soon enough. They may be scraping and begging for men, but he'll be fighting off no Germans while he's hobbling. I'm right glad of it, too."

"Yes," Mary quietly agreed.

Mary went down to dinner with her head full of Dickon. Would he recover? What would become of him if he did not? She barely acknowledged Colin when she entered the dining room and did not move her eyes from her plate until the service began. A meal had rarely been so solemn since Mary, Colin, and Craven had reunited under the magic of the secret garden; even quiet moments were generally filled with contentment. With Craven gone on a now rare excursion to Paris, the cousins had shared almost lively meals. It did not take someone of half Colin’s wit to see something was weighing heavily upon his cousin, but she resisted Colin’s attempts to draw her burden out.

This change in Mary’s temper was untimely for Colin. He had come to dinner finally prepared to discuss something of great importance with her. Though it did not always please him, her opinion and her frank delivery of it meant much to him. He had come to dinner relying on hearing it, hoping it would affirm a great decision he had made that afternoon. Until dessert, he waited for an opening in the gloom or some offer of conversation from Mary, but none came. Colin was forced to make his own opening, and he did it bluntly. “I have decided to volunteer.”

“Volunteer for what?” asked Mary, bitterly.

“The war, Mary. I am going to join the army.”

Mary’s eyes were drawn to Colin for the first time all evening. They were narrowed and flashing with anger. “You can’t do that!”

“I can!” Colin retorted indignantly. “I can, and I will. The army needs men like me! You would know that,” he sniped, “if you paid attention to the newspaper.”

“What do I care for the newspaper? The news is all grim! I do not need to be told there is a war on and that people are being killed and maimed every second of the day. I know it – why read it!”

“We can’t all spend our time knitting jumpers and making charity visits!”

Mary was incensed. She had struggled a great deal to learn knitting, needing constant advice from her girlfriends and even the housemaids to progress from lumpy socks to jumpers. Further, she had been very pleased with herself for thinking and doing for others, rather than locking herself away in the secret garden as she had when she was younger. People had been pleased with her charity, and she was not too modest to be pleased with it herself. “We can’t all spend our time thinking of ourselves! We can’t all be as selfish as you!”

“As selfish as me? I am going to risk my life for the good of others!”

Mary threw down her utensils and stood up with a great clamor. “You aren’t doing anyone any good doing that, just yourself! You’re too proud to think of anyone else, Colin Craven!”

“I am not!” Colin mirrored Mary’s actions and expressions; they had always been evenly matched.

“Have you thought about your father? What will he think?”

Colin stiffened. Straightening his shirt, he declared that his father would be proud of him.

“Oh, would he? His only son skipping off to war to save face with his friends, never thinking about anyone else!”

“And what should I do? Sit around until the army comes to drag me away?”

Mary’s eyes flared. She remembered Dickon’s face the day he had been called up; she had never seen him look so unhappy. “Better that than skipping off, thinking of nobody else! Did you think once how your father would feel if you did this and died? No!”

“Of course I did!” screamed Colin. “But my father does not live in a fantasy, not like you. He knows I will be called up!”

“Not if you volunteer to be shot by the Germans first!”

“I am not going to be killed!”

“You don’t know that! You don’t know anything about anything – nothing!” Mary slammed her chair back under the table and stormed away, stopped only by an equally petulant display by her cousin. “Why would you want to go to war?”

“I don’t _want_ to go – I have to!” Colin grew an inch with this statement, swelling with English pride.

“That’s it! It’s all for you, so you look good, Mr. Rajah! You think you will jaunt off to war and come back with glory all over you and be the hero! We’ll see how heroic you feel when you are murdered in a trench – or come home maimed!”

“Don’t be stupid!”

“It’s _not_ stupid! If Dickon can be shot, so will you!” Mary shuddered to a stop as soon as the words crossed her lips. She had not intended to tell Colin, not so bluntly - and she had not intended to relate them so intimately in her thoughts at all.

Colin was too angry and too stunned to notice Mary shrinking back to her own size. He hated when she called him a rajah, as she had when he had been a spoiled, unbearable brat. He hated to know she was thinking of Dickon even more. They had been children together, the three of them, but now they were grown. He did not want her to be thinking of Dickon anymore. “So you think Dickon is better than I am? I stand no chance if _Dickon_ could not come home in one piece? Or maybe you wish you had had this conversation with him!”

“I am having it with you!” she screamed. “If you would send yourself off to war, Mr. Rajah, so people will admire you, you’ve never learned a thing since the day you stopped making people carry you around!” Uninterested in any response Colin could muster, though he did not bid fair to do it with his mouth hanging open, Mary left the dining room. She ran past the servant’s hall to escape the house, grabbing a coat on her way. It was too big for her, but it was warm and kept the falling snow from chilling her through.

Without a thought to where she was going, Mary went directly to the secret garden. She pushed the ivy aside and entered through the unlocked door. The steps leading down from the garden path were steep and slippery. She slowed for the first time since leaving the house, taking care not to take a foolish spill. As she emerged from the foot of the stairs, she was first shocked and then annoyed by the sight of another person already taking refuge in the garden.

“Martha!”

"Oh, Miss Mary!" Martha jumped off of the stump and twitched with the critical indecision over first straightening her cap or putting her handkerchief out of sight. "I’m sorry, miss," she stammered. "I know I shouldn't be in here, I never meant any harm by intruding-"

"Why _are_ you in here?" asked Mary, imperiously. "It's snowing, and it is cold."

"Aye, I know that-"

"It is nearly dark."

"It is, miss-"

"And there is nothing here. The garden is frozen through until the thaw - look at it, it's all dead!" Martha sobbed into her handkerchief at the word, but Mary did not notice. She was following her own advice. "Look at it all...."

The garden was sleeping heavily. It looked like a frosted jungle, covered with the iced-over skeletons of an English garden, poking and hanging every which way. Everything was angled or limp; nothing now spoke of the softness and delight that would come out of this barren land when the winter gave way. Even the flames her mind had placed in the garden were too lively for the scene. It was all dead and comfortless. It reminded Mary of India.

“There’s nothing here,” Mary declared. “There’s nothing here for anyone.”

“If you wouldn’t be bothered, miss, I’d like to stay a few minutes. I promise I won’t touch anything.”

“I don’t care if- you aren’t making any sense! There isn’t anything here. You will make yourself sick.” Mary took Martha’s arm and tugged. Martha resisted. “This is stupid! Why-“

"Because, Miss Mary!” Martha cried.  “It’s… Oh, Miss Mary, how could I forget how Master Colin came out of here, walking like anybody when not a soul thought he'd ever come out of that bed? Him, and you, and... and Dickon, all together. You spent all your hours here, such a long time, and not a lick of bad luck could stick to any of you, not like now. I beg your pardon, miss, but I couldn't help myself. I thought if I came here, that it might have been… that he might-"

"He's not! He’s not here!”

A cry and a series of increasing thuds drew the immediate attention of both ladies. Their eyes were turned just in time to watch Colin suffer the hospitality of the last few steps leading down from the garden door. He held up his arms when he hit the ground. “I believe the rajah can help himself to his feet.”

Colin pulled himself up and dusted the frost off as well as he could. As he finished, he noticed Martha for the first time. She was gathering herself to leave. Colin stopped her and insisted she have his coat. Like Mary, he regarded Martha warmly, though somewhat more out of guilt for the repugnant abuse he had heaped upon her as a boy than for feelings of companionship. Furthermore, she was Dickon’s sister; that rated his overcoat, even if she was a housemaid.

“What are you doing here?” Mary held fast to the last embers of resentment.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Martha sensed the cousins had more to say than should be said in front of the maid. “I beg your pardon, Master Colin, Miss Mary. I’ll be going.”

“Don’t go,” Mary pleaded.

Colin added his support to the idea. “I also… I would speak to you, as well, and give you my condolences. Mary informed me this afternoon of Dickon’s misfortune. I am very sorry to hear it – we all are.”

“Thank you, sir. You are so kind to say as much. Dickon would be happy to hear… he did always think of you as a friend.” Martha, realizing her forwardness, shook her head and wiped her eyes again. “If you’ll forgive him – us – being so forward, sir.”

“I thought of him as the same,” replied Colin. “I’d not have you apologize for it. Truer friends are not to be found everywhere.” This he said with complete sincerity. In this garden, in the midst of memories of Dickon’s part in his physical and spiritual awakening, so close to the place he took his first steps, all of Colin’s boyish resentment melted away.

Mary thought it was a fair beginning for her cousin and began to regret throwing the word ‘rajah’ at him – it only ever passed her lips as a stinging insult. She looked at him with a softer expression, one that would trade her apology for a furthering of her wishes.  Colin acquiesced. “Furthermore,” he continued, a little more stiffly, “I would…” The rajah suddenly lost his self-importance. “Whatever way Dickon’s leg ends up, there will always be a place for him at Misselthwaite.”

Martha’s eyes widened with astonishment. “Sir?”

“The garden – all the gardens – could be in no better hands than his. We’ve not had a... a _proper_ gardener,” he smiled with self-satisfaction at his inflection, “since Ben Weatherstaff. He would be doing us a great favor to come work for us - when he is able, of course.”

Mary could have kissed her cousin, rajah or not. Accepted, this offer would do much good. Dickon would have constancy of position and income. He would be taken care of and in a manner Mary never could manage: preserving his pride. Martha would not have to fret over her brother, and neither would Mary. And, not so insignificantly, it would settle forever the question of action on the tender feelings Mary and Dickon had for one another. Certainly, Mary thought, the chasm between servant and mistress must be immutable.

“Oh, Master Colin!” Martha shed several happy tears. “He will be so glad of it! Aye, he will be. You are too good – and you, Miss Mary! I will write my mother directly – oh, Mrs. Medlock will be looking for me! I’ve been out here too long, she will be in such a state! Thank you, sir! Miss.” She dropped a curtsey to Colin and then another to Mary before taking her leave, cap bobbing happily as she dashed up the stairs and out of sight.

“That was a pretty thing to do,” Mary observed when Martha was gone.

“Only as much as he deserves.” Colin watched his cousin for a blush of agreement; he saw nothing. “I would still be in that bed if not for him – and you.”

“I should not have screamed at you,” Mary blurted out, after an uneasy pause. “And I did not mean it.”

“So I’m not a rajah?”

“No rajah would want to run off to war.”

“A rajah is selfish and spoiled, isn’t he?”

 “You aren’t. Well,” said Mary, teasingly, “not usually.” A smile flickered across her face, but it faded when Colin did not return it.

“But it would be selfish to volunteer to go to war, when I am healthy? The army is in a bad way, they don’t have enough men. Anyway, I will probably be conscripted. ” Colin sat down on a bench and swung his legs. “I might as well get the business of getting started over with.”

Mary marched over to Colin. “You still don’t understand!”

Colin stood up. He was several inches taller than Mary, but, looking her in the eye, he felt no advantage. “Maybe _you_ don’t understand!” Flustered and angry, he pushed his way past Mary and stormed deeper into the garden.

Following him, Mary called out half-heartedly for her cousin. She chased him through rows of sleeping bushes and dormant vines, across frozen grass, and up and down icy steps. She caught up to him only when he stopped, directly in front of Mrs. Craven’s swing. Colin did not acknowledge her. He stood quietly and stared at the swing, its seat dusted with snow, as it swayed with the swirls of wind.

“Colin,” whispered Mary after several silent minutes, as she touched her hand to his cold shoulder, “I’m sorry for what I said to you.” She winced when there was no reply, but she continued. “I don’t want you to go, but it isn’t for my sake – not completely. Your father… he would be so…  if you were made to go to war, it would be bad for him. But if you choose to go – don’t you understand? Don’t you see how it is different? If something happens to you, and you chose to go-“

“You mean if I am crippled!” Colin snapped around. His eyes were red and wet with tears. “If these eight years- if everything was for nothing! But I don't want coddling - I don't need it! I don't need.." Enraged, he snapped around again and pushed his mother's swing, slamming it into the stone wall. The snow showered off of it and the ropes twisted. He stumbled back into Mary; she wrapped her arms around him. “If she hadn’t died…”

They watched as the ropes eventually straightened themselves. The seat stopped shaking, and its small arc became regular. The snow began to collect again.

 **EPILOGUE**

Springtime came early to Misselthwaite.

When Craven returned, Colin never mentioned his desire to volunteer for service. Although fully believing he would be conscripted, he meant to do his father the favor of taking the matter out of their hands. He worked with the villagers to satisfy his pride, laboring in the place of their missing men. The families were grateful for the young master’s help and happy to receive his pretty cousin and her gifts of plants and seeds when every back in Yorkshire was covered with a knitted jumper.

Dickon recovered in his native environment quickly. The damp weather did his leg no favors, but he was not crippled. After seeing more of humanity in the war than one such as he was designed to see, he was glad of the offer to work in the gardens at the manor. It was no small bonus that Mary did not flee when he found her alone in the secret garden. Their friendship flourished again under the cover of blooming vines, and if they looked at each other a little longer than they ought, they saw no harm in it.

One evening, Colin’s horse was spooked by a passing animal and tossed him off. His arm was badly broken in the fall. He fashioned a sling out of his shirt and walked nearly two miles before being found by Dickon, who had been sent out by Mary. Dickon, realizing Colin could not ride with his arm in such a tender state, walked the last mile beside him in companionable silence.

The doctor who set Colin’s arm predicted a full recovery, but only after a long convalescence. When Colin was called up for service, his arm rendered him physically unsuitable. After seeing the relief in his father’s eyes, Colin no longer had to weigh his father’s fragile emotions against his own pride; no offense to his own pride was worth his father’s pain. Colin continued to make himself useful to the people of Yorkshire, who never forgot the service of the young master in that time of hardship. They were all rewarded with a fair harvest and, finally, the Armistice.

And so, as the patch of Yorkshire dominated by Misselthwaite Manor hunkered down at the approach of winter, its people harbored great hopes for a springtime of peace.

 


End file.
